[ by Charles Cameron — Anonymous use of sound clips from movies ]
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Taste in movies varies. As the Hollywood Reporter reported just the other day:
Orson Welles‘ Citizen Kane no longer enjoys the moniker of greatest film of all time, a plaudit it has held for 50 years. The movie has occupied top billing in the British Film Institute-published magazine Sight & Sound‘s once-a-decade international critics’ film poll since 1962. But that crown, according to Sight & Sound‘s 2012 survey of 846 movie experts who participate, has now passed to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
I thought it might be interesting to look at the recently released Anonymous YouTube video encouraging people to do whatever it is they do — “only you know what is right for yourself” — at the Republican National Convention.
To see where their taste in movies takes us.
I’ll include a few screen shots and some of their own techno-voice commentary, but it’s only the borrowed clips I’m really after — taking a look at what they choose to quote, what they leave out, and where there may be questionable truths or conflicting assertions.
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Their opening line is:
Greetings, world. We are Anonymous.
Then, over some chest-thumping music, one of those rotating globe thingies that let’s you know what’s coming next is Important — the Onion has a good one — resolves into the Anonymous question mark logo:
A techno-voice speaks:
We are not terrorists, but are your greatest allies. We wish to liberate you from suppression and oppression, and no matter how many of us fall in battle, Anonymous cannot be defeated. We are Anonymous, we are legion, we do not forgive, we do not forget. Expect us.
Then, in white text over some groovy graphics:
Each of us has our own path but each of us share the same goal… a free Humanity. Together we stand…
The groovy graphics then add a small inset frame from Tonight, on CNN Presents, very cool:
The clip has some neat journo-thrilled-to-be-important-speak:
Anonymous — they live in the shadows.
an (anonymous) quote:
This is the closest thing to a global revolution that we have ever gotten.
and more journo-thrill:
But their message and tactics have ignited a movement around the world.
We then cut, after some thunder-like sounds, to a mechanical nodding and smiling anonymask speaking in techno-voice:
We are the ideology of truth , we are uncompromising, we are the most powerful underground resistance the world has ever seen. We were once a minority but now we are the majority. No matter how hard they try they cannot stop us now.
It’s right around here that things get filmic.
We have Al Pacino as Tony D’Amato in Any given Sunday, voice over:
We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the ** kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell… one inch at a time.
More of the mech-nodding techno-voice:
We all are angry, very very angry…
Which segues nicely into Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Paddy Chayevsky‘s Network saying, over images of one guy jumping on the roof of a cop car and others smashing the windows:
I want you to get mad! … First you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ … I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’
Classic!
More inspirational movie sound clips follow in voice over.
There’s Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa in Rocky Balboa:
But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits,
Vince Lombardi — I’m not sure where this one comes from, a newsreel perhaps?
I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious
Winston Churchill — yes, the late military historian and Conservative Prime Minister of the undaunted British, addressing the boys of Harrow (a private school roughly equivalent to Phillips Academy or Groton in the US):
Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
— spoken with true British upper-class schoolboy fortitude!
Then we go back back to Anonymous’ own text, noting that “main stream news media”:
have labeled us all as domestic terrorists. We are here to tell the public to not be afraid of Anonymous, to not be afraid of Black Block or [techno-mumble] Block. Our aim is not to cause violence to the public. We are no danger at all to American citizens. The people of america need to know we are on their side. We fight for true freedom, we take a stand for the hungry, the poor, the suffering citizens of this country, who are sick of politicians doing what they please at our expense.
The only difference between us and protesters of the past is that we believe in fighting for our rights. We indeed are not pacifistic: if the oppressors fight us we will fight back ten-fold. … Do not believe the lies your government feeds you. Instead, join us at RNC and take a stand with us. United by one, divided by zero.
Okay, that’s the invitation. And then, whoosh back into an American (I suppose you might say) equivalent to the Churchill news clip — this one from MLK, complete with the original visual:
I have a dream, that one day this nation will rise up..
Another classic! But we’ll talk about that a bit later.
Next up, over video of cops in riot gear, we have Will Smith as Christopher Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness:
Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. [ … ] You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.
And Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks in Miracle, over an image of the streets aflame:
Great moments, are born from great opportunity. And that’s what you have here, tonight.
Okay, we’re coming to the close. The music shifts to some semi-classical piano, and the nodding technanonymity says a few words… then, over some tranquil shots of the globe we live on…
Billy Bob Thornton as Coach Gaines in Friday Night Lights tells us:
Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn’t let them down, because you told them the truth. And that truth is that you did everything that you could. There wasn’t one more thing that you could’ve done.
Can you live in that moment, as best you can, with clear eyes and love in your heart? With joy in your heart?
Fade…
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Okay, we got — what? American football, boxing, hockey, a Conservative politician, a non-violent Civil Rights leader, a salesman-entrepreneur, lots of police and rioting, no military that I could detect, unless you count Churchill’s speech…
Funnily enough, V for Vendetta (image at the top of the post) isn’t among the movies they’ve clipped from, although the Anonymous mask is a Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask.
Interesting that in the quote from Network, after the words “I want you to get mad!” and before “first you’ve got to get mad” they’ve omitted the words:
I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot…
Funny that in quoting Any Given Sunday, they chose a version that has “shit” bleeped out of the soundtrack, so Pacino says:
We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the ** kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light…
Funny that they say:
The only difference between us and protesters of the past is that we believe in fighting for our rights. We indeed are not pacifistic: if the oppressors fight us we will fight back ten-fold.
and then quote Martin Luther King Jr, the Gandhian practitioner of satyagraha…
Funny that they say, “now we are the majority” and a little later, “we can not win this fight alone”.
Ooh! And that’s a great (math) line at the end, though I don’t know quite what it means:
United by one, divided by zero.
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I’m more of a Gandhian, pacifistic, lay down on my back and let them roll over me, foolish school myself — and I don’t watch many sports movies, so I wasn’t the ideal target audience here.
The Martin Luther King speech might just take my “best documentary” award. And I’m with the critics on Vertigo.
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Look, you close with the question:
Can you live in that moment, as best you can, with clear eyes and love in your heart? With joy in your heart?
While you are “very, very angry”? I don’t know, I’m inclined to doubt it. But I’m pretty sure that if, as you claim, you “don’t forgive” you can’t.
That’s just not the way “love in your heart” works.
